Individual visits

Derwentwater Independent Hostel welcomes individual visitors from all over the world. Whether you want a long holiday on your own, exploring the Lake District National Park, or you are passing through for one night on the Coast to Coast cycle route, we look forward to hearing your stories and meeting your needs.

You will have the opportunity to make the most of our communal spaces and chat to fellow guests. However, if you really want to get away from it all (and everybody!) then there is plenty of space to be on your own and feel at ease. We do not have single rooms, but our dormitories are spacious and single-sex.

Here are some of the things that our individual visitors get up to:

• Research: a great example is the geographical and geological research carried out by our frequent guest Peter Wilson. We were delighted when his fascinating book Lake District Mountain Landforms was published in 2010.

• Photography: some of our visitors come several times a year, capturing the seasonal changes in the landscape.

• Visiting friends and family.

• Attending events such as the Keswick Film Festival, Words by the Water, the Keswick Jazz Festival and the Keswick Mountain Festival.

• Training for different sports: we are the perfect base for cycling, open-water swimming, running, climbing, mountaineering, scrambling, kayaking, and paragliding.

• Making the most of studying abroad: we love meeting intrepid foreign students from universities such as Manchester, Durham, Newcastle, Nottingham and Lancaster. Most of our student visitors use public transport and are visiting the Lake District for the first time. 

• Inter-hostel walking and cycling.